No Viewers will open - Viewer 2 or Third Party

[Viper Shadowcry]

 

I recently did a clean reformat on my Gateway laptop that had shipped with Windows Vista x64, I upgraded it to Windows 7 x64. I have downloaded all driver updates, and all Windows updates up to and including Service Pack 1. When I try to open any viewer, whether it is Viewer 2 or a 3rd Party viewer such as Phoenix, It does the following:

Detecting hardware...
Initializing VSF...

Opens up the window that SHOULD be the login screen, but the viewers lock up there. I have done everything I could think of or find online:

Uninstalled and reinstalled the viewers
Deleted the Secondlife Data from the Users folder and reboot - no luck
Running the viewers as Administrator
Installed: DirectX, Quicktime, all .Net Frameworks, C++ redistrubutable (I've seen programs need it)
All Windows Updates are applied, as are all driver updates.

I've never had a problem like this... The very same laptop ran SL fine, all viewers, with Windows Vista x64... If I HAVE to go back to Vista I will, but I really don't want to, Windows 7 is running much better on my machine.

Anyone have any suggestions for anything else to try before I throw in the towel?



-Viper

 

 

EDITS:

 

SP1 is the latest service pack available to Windows 7 64 bit. Windows XP got up to SP3.

I tried the method described at http://www.geekblogger.org/2010/10/second-life-game-initializing-vfs-error.html with no sucess

I've had a computer do the initializing VSF error, but this is different. It clears that part of the loading, but when the login UI box should pop up for me to enter my user name and login, it locks up at that point.

ESET Smart Security is installed on the laptop, but it has never caused problems before. For testing I disabled the firewall and antivirus/malware parts of the security software and the login screen still freezes.

 

EDITS 2:

Uninstalled both SL Viewers, deleted the folders in userdata, and prefetch data, rebooted, reinstalled, same problem. Doesn't matter if it's viewer 2 or a 3rd party viewer :(

Laptop has 3 gigs of DDR2 ram - I don't see that being an issue.

[valerie Inshan]

Any firewall activated in your system? This could block the viewers.

[Knowl Paine]

I'm not a pc expert but there are a few here at the forum. I would be patient and wait for additional responses.

My thoughts are service pack 1? I think I use service pack 3. I would make sure my firewall is not blocking any of the SL applications, turn of any pop-up blocker programs.

When I first loaded V2 I noticed a bunch of pop ups opening, voice accessing the internet, a notice my graphics card was not recognized, they could cause a freeze.

Where is Peewee 0.0 

 

[Charolotte Caxton]

First, don't give up:

try this first http://www.geekblogger.org/2010/10/second-life-game-initializing-vfs-error.html

 

additional related reading

http://community.secondlife.com/t5/forums/searchpage/tab/message?q=vfs

 

 

[Nyll Bergbahn]

If the login screen appears, it's going past the point where most people report the loading procedure hangs at VFS initializing. I would be inclined to uninstall everything again including removing the SL folder in AppData and also the Second Life Prefetch file in Windows > Prefetch just in case it is corrupted in some way. Then download and install a fresh copy of the viewer.

I can't find anything to suggest that ESET Smart Security causes any conflicts with Second Life and Second Life is not referenced anywhere on the ESET Wilders Security Forum or in its KB. Are you running ESET in Active or Passive mode?

 If loading still fails, can you please advise on how much RAM you have on your laptop. If very limited and Windows 7 OS is hogging a good chunk of it, more so than Vista did, perhaps that is causing a problem. Torley alluded to this in a thread some time ago. The VFS reference he quoted is taken from the VFS Wiki.

"For users with only 512 megabytes of physical memory, up to 75% of their system memory may already be allocated by the OS and background services. For better performance with limited physical memory, the cache setting should actually be lower rather than higher, to minimize the VFS RAM-disk allocation size. For example, a 1-gigabyte cache setting creates a 204 megabyte VFS (20% of 1 gig) and which essentially guarantees poor performance and heavy swapping with only 512 megs of physical memory, even before the client has connected to the grid."